


kairos

by klickitats



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, Hair Washing, Haven (Dragon Age), Meddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 12:52:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5248919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klickitats/pseuds/klickitats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josephine and Leliana decide to make use of the Inquisitor's hut while she's in the Hinterlands, and end up at a crossroads instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	kairos

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a prompt fill for Josie/Leliana: "You hold my destiny in your hands." Unbeta'ed, so forgive my errors (and my sins). 
> 
> As I understand it (read: as someone told me once), the Greek word _kairos_ means something like the most opportune moment. The moment where change becomes possible.

Josephine detests Haven. A strong word, yes, and she returns to it only on the worst of days, but still true. Everything is too close together, banked in by both snow and infancy: Cullen’s recruits are practically whirling their swords in the stables, Josephine’s office doubles as a mage laboratory for strings of demon-gut and slices of scaled flesh. The wet smack each piece makes on the table when Lavellan tosses them—so haphazardly—sometimes from the _door_ —makes Josephine lose her appetite for days. That is to say nothing of the fact that she, Cassandra, and Madame Vivienne cram all together in one room at night. Occasionally she flits to Leliana’s tent, but it is so cold, damnably cold, all out in the open and no walls to keep them sheltered from the high wind—

“Tilt your head back,” Leliana murmurs, and warm water streams over her scalp.

So why shouldn’t they partake of Lavellan’s little hovel?

The Inquisitor is hip deep in the Hinterlands with Bull at her back, Solas at her shoulder, and Varric at her knees, and in no need of the meager shack they’ve given her as her own. It could be made of wire filament and burlap, for all Josephine cares. For a night, it is theirs. Mere privacy now enjoys the definition of _bliss._ A sigh escapes from between her lips, unbidden. She is draped over the wooden chair in her nightgown, eyes closed, replete as wet linen.

Not even the Maker could part Cassandra from her rotation with the copper tub tonight ( _one_ tub, there is only _one_ to pass between them all, and the fact that Josephine cannot bathe with her usual frequency breeds a whole new list of resentments), but Leliana has gracefully made do with the side table, two borrowed basins, and hot water simmering in front of Lavellan’s fireplace. Melted from snow. It sounds like a scrap of prose from a novel, but Josephine finds no poetry in it. Regardless, it is warm. Gloriously comforting.

“Thank you,” Josephine finally murmurs, somewhere between Leliana’s long fingers sliding through her wet hair and another rinse.  

Leliana doesn’t say anything. Instead, she leans down, presses her lips in the center of Josephine’s throat. Lips curl against her skin; the smile is small and hard-won. The touch sends a little trill up her spine, a flute touched into tune. She lets her head fall back a little more, wet hair trailing down the chair and dripping onto the floor.

“Where,” Leliana murmurs, “is my letter?”  

Josephine opens her eyes.

“Where?” she asks, again. One of her hands drops to rest on her shoulder. 

Josephine stays absolutely still when she answers, “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

Leliana breathes out slowly, and Josephine gazes at the thatched ceiling. The room is hot, dizzyingly so. “Josephine,” she says.  

Not _Josie,_ then. She winds her fingers around Leliana’s wrist, squeezes. “It’s not what you think,” Josephine murmurs, and Maker, Leliana goes still as death above her—even the soft breath fanning against her neck ceases.

“Wait,” Josephine whispers. “Wait. I misspoke.”

She feels Leliana blink, just once, eyelashes against the underside of her chin. “No,” Leliana corrects. “You did not.”    
  
The coolness in her voice narrows the entire room into the touch of her lips. Only Leliana can make a kiss to the throat as exacting as the tip of a blade.  

“Imagine my surprise when I learned my orders had not been followed by my agent.” She lifts her head, looking down at Josephine. So close their noses nearly touch, curtained by soft red hair. “When I learned my runner had not even left Haven with the missive to deal with the traitor.”

From this angle, Leliana is the whole world. “I did not seek to meddle,” Josephine explains, and Leliana closes her eyes.

“A lie,” she says.

Josephine swallows. “Time,” she murmurs, her hand still on Leliana’s wrist. “Just a little time. To make sure it was what you truly wanted.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Leliana’s eyes snap open. “A traitor deserves death. His betrayal left one of my agents gutted outside the Pearl in Denerim. Bleeding out in front of a brothel. What kind of end is that?”

Josephine says, “I know.” She runs her thumb in a circle on Leliana’s wrist. Every movement must be measured, precarious and precise. “But there are alternatives.”  

“Tell me,” Leliana says, eyes hard as diamond, “you do not think he is _the first_ traitor I have put to the knife.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t,” she tells her. Her voice lies bare as her throat, “but here we are, destroying every old way and Chantry tenet Thedas holds dear.”

“So you demand I change.” It’s not a question.

Josephine reaches up, cups her pale face in her fingers. In Tevene, a word exists that means _a breath, or a moment where everything will change, or perhaps not._ She cannot recall the phrase — it resides somewhere in one of her schoolbooks from long ago. All that matters is they live inside it as she takes a breath and finds her words.

“Leliana,” she murmurs, “I only want you to have a choice _._ ”

She wants to say so much more— _I want to make a world where you never need stain your hands with blood_ and _I can hide nothing from you, but you can hide nothing from me_ and _I would bring every soul who twisted you into servitude to their knees, were they still alive to breathe and speak a word._

But too many have already said these things to Leliana, tried to bind her with promises of freedom, and Josephine will not count herself among them. _Stop atoning_ , she pleads, her own thoughts rising on a tide of anxious panic.

The truth: it is not only choice she dreams of for Leliana, but a chance. Josephine knows, with all honesty, moments exist where neither of them knows who Leliana is, or isn’t, and all that lives between the two of them cannot serve.

The pain of it nearly pricks Josephine’s eyes with tears, but not tonight. She will not bend this moment with her own suffering. She gives it up without thought: all control, all investment. If anyone deserves a chance, or a choice, it is Leliana, without negotiation. And the price means Josephine must withdraw her hands, and let the course continue as Leliana wills.

But Leliana’s eyes do not widen or soften. The corners do not crinkle, nor do they refine themselves to a stare of unyielding anger. They only close. Leliana’s eyelashes are the pale red of new wheat in the sun. The sight of them fluttering shut clenches Josephine’s heart in her chest.  

She leans down, presses her lips to Josephine’s, until she closes her eyes and gives herself to the darkness. She opens beneath Leliana like water parting between fingers.

They do not stop. When their mouths part, someone will decide what the sun rises on in the morning, and neither can bear the turn. So they kiss, and kiss, and Leliana slides a careful hand between the laces of Josephine’s nightgown, and Josephine winds her fingers through Leliana’s hair. Anything to make this last: this strange, opportune pause, this lingering dance on the edge of the knife, this moment where everything vibrates with possibility.

Anything, _anything_ , before change makes fools of them both.


End file.
